Are there any text editors for the Mac that will let me write in full-screen mode?

October 14, 2004 8:09 PM

Are there any text editors for the Mac that will let me write in full-screen mode--i.e., with, say, yellow text on a black background, and no menu bar, dock, desktop, and so on?

I've found this one program called Ulysses that does it--but I can't stand how it makes me work in projects, instead of editing single documents one at a time. Im looking for other suggestions.

posted by josh to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

I think I've found a good way to brush up on my Cocoa / Quartz programming.. oh man a full-screen terminal app would make me so happy.. if there is one and I haven't found it someone tell me before I go and build one :)
posted by Space Coyote at 8:32 PM on October 14, 2004

Response by poster: I think *everything* should have a full-screen mode. It's a mystery why more apps don't have it.

Basically all I want in the whole world is a full-screen text editor that doesn't suck, and for which I can change stuff like the font and color.
posted by josh at 8:35 PM on October 14, 2004

You probably don't want to install X and go the unix way, but if you did, IceWM allows any window to be full-screened. Very useful, not to mention pretty.
posted by fvw at 8:39 PM on October 14, 2004

You can set the dock to be hidden when your mouse isn't over it. Go to System Prefs:Dock and check "Automatically Show and Hide Dock."

This will still leave you with the menu bar, of course.
posted by eustacescrubb at 8:52 PM on October 14, 2004

After searching, I found Tofu...a multi-column reader, but not an editor.

Come to think of it, I want a full screen editor too. You hear me Cocoa developers?
posted by pedantic at 9:21 PM on October 14, 2004

What I suggest is buying a copy of Virtual PC, installing DOS on it, and running a DOS word processor in VPC's full screen mode. Or download an Apple II emulator and get a copy of AppleWorks. I mean, if you want to go back to the '80s, you're going to have to, you know, go back to the '80s.
posted by kindall at 11:31 PM on October 14, 2004

What I suggest is buying a copy of Virtual PC, installing DOS on it, and running a DOS word processor in VPC's full screen mode.

You could give dosbox a shot first, since you don't have to buy it, and it also has a full screen mode (I think). Of course, there may be better solutions than this.
posted by advil at 12:26 AM on October 15, 2004

josh,

One reason why all software shouldn't have a full screen mode...is gramps might trigger it and not know how to get out of it.

Seriously. The concept of good UI is that it should be intuitive and you can't get "trapped" somewhere.

Full screen modes totally bone you like that.

Uh, and no, I don't know of a full screen editor.
posted by filmgeek at 8:25 AM on October 15, 2004

Does MS Word for OSX allow this?
posted by xmutex at 9:41 AM on October 15, 2004

I don't know of such an app, but - depending on what you mean by "text editor" - it should be possible to write one in an hour or two using REALbasic.
posted by Mars Saxman at 9:49 AM on October 15, 2004

You can do everything but hide the menubar with BBEdit and an auto-hidden Dock. I think you can live with the menubar.
posted by joeclark at 1:27 PM on October 15, 2004

this may not be what you're looking for unless you want to be in a text only environment. but in osx at the login window, if it is set for "name and password" rather than "list of users", instead of your username type ">console" and hit return. you can now log in without the GUI.

If you are using list of users, click the down arrow once, to select any user, then click option-return this should switch to "name and password" mode. now type ">console" as before. to exit (if someone gets trapped) just type logout or exit, and it will take you back to the login screen.

This is also a funny way to make people think their computer is broken.
posted by rhyax at 2:08 AM on October 16, 2004